Why Should You Care?

Farmer

Unless you are a corporate farmer there are few of you left. Your family may have been farmers for generations but as corporate farming came into existence, your family farms just could not compete with the amount of capital and leverage that they had. Many of your grandfathers and great grand fathers either declared bankruptcy or had to sell out to the corporate farming empires. Now these corporations claim the subsidies that were intended for your grandparents and pay them to their share holders and CEOs. All of this comes out of your tax dollars. Let us not mention the corporate right to plant genotypes. Monsanto owns the seed type for the vast majority of the soy bean grown in this country and therefore they control the price. If your non Monsanto fields become contaminated with their genetic beans you can be prosecuted and many farmers have.

Finally, there seem to be but three Ways for a Nation to acquire Wealth. The first is by War as the Romans did in plundering their conquered Neighbours. This is Robbery. The second by Commerce which is generally Cheating. The third by Agriculture the only honest Way; wherein Man receives a real Increase of the Seed thrown into the Ground, in a kind of continual Miracle wrought by the Hand of God in his favour, as a Reward for his innocent Life, and virtuous Industry. Benjamin Franklin, Positions to be Examined, April 4, 1769